Notifier Veterans Affairs Hospitals Case Study

Project Profile Veterans Affairs Hospitals Stratton VA Medical Center OUR COUNTRY VETERANS are 152 Veterans Affairs VA hospitals across the country At three of those hospitals the Albany Stratton VA Medical Center in New York the Grand Junction VA Medical Center Colorado and the Dallas VA Medical Center in Texas fire alarm and emergency systems are keeping vets safe when they seek care All three sites made protection upgrades to be expanded across future facility additions VA Grand Junction VA Medical Center is a large campus of 17 buildings serving 37,000 The VA wanted Commercial Specialists a local NOTIFIER Engineered Systems to replace its antiquated protection with a new system that functions as both fire alarm and emergency communications system an upgrade required the existing system to remain active while the NOTIFIER system installed The flexible architecture of NOTIFIER high speed local area network LAN on fiber optic cable allowed fire alarm control panels to be easily added one by one WORLD HEADQUARTERS Clintonville Road cid 129 Northford CT 06472 USA 203 484 7161 cid 129 Fax 203 484 7118 specs called for the capability to disseminate notifications throughout the entire cam inside and outside And they wanted the mes to be customizable as well if there a fire in building 9 an individualized pre recorded in that building would instruct an evacua while patients and staff in the other 16 buildings not be bothered At the same time the VA the ability to all page the entire campus needed put intelligent panels with digital voice control in every building that flexibility really allowed to tailor the voice messages they wanted and the ability for mass notification said Jason of Commercial Specialists DVC is a flexible unique voice evac system You can much do anything to meet the needs of customer building has an NFS2 3030 fire alarm control with integrated DVC All panels are tied to an workstation staffed 24 7 The entire of panels and devices along with 3 D lay of every building are graphically detailed on the giving the VA system status information real time and pinpoint accuracy on the location details of all events wanted to be able to get campus wide at one location not to have to go to building and see what going on with that said Porter is the case with many healthcare facilities are always being made to keep up with healthcare offerings and growing populations Grand Junction VA is no different just built a new surgery center at the hospital we already expanding its system said Porter York VA York Albany Stratton VA Medical Center was similar retrofit of a 20 year old zoned system that rife with false alarms The main hospital is 16 connected to a number of nearby ancillary and serves approximately 32,000 vets year had problems in the past where they able to locate an alarm on an existing zone Brad Nelson of Alarm Suppression Inc safety involved they really needed a system would eliminate that Suppression and electrical contractor Clifford Gray Inc installed two ONYXWorks workstations DVCs 13 NFS2 640 fire alarm control panels NFS 320 panels and two network annunciators on a fiber network carrying digital audio loops and fire alarm systems also created customized commands in the system to simplify maintenance set macros for them With one click of a button they disable all the strobes all the elevator recalls shut downs system also includes 68 digital audio amplifiers allow for separate zoned voice communications in the Colorado case when an alarm goes off in part of a building that zone gets an individual got a very specific voice evacuation plan only in the smoke zone in alarm does it acti strobes and an audible alert The rest of the floor the rest of the hospital get a different announce said Nelson to Nelson the ease of setting up the points the field was valuable to the project With the detectors pull stations and other initiating being addressable contractors could follow integrator plans and install each device without to fool with the usual dipswitches or bar was the case with Grand Junction VA Albany protection system had to be expandable with capacity to support additions wanted that was easy to add on to and had a lot room for future expansions said Nelson VA Dallas VA Medical Center covers 84 acres just of downtown Dallas and serves as the referral for the VA North Texas Health Care System to Johnny Stacy Sales Manager with local and security integrator SSD Systems the Dallas Medical Center which employs more than 4,500 and is the second largest VA in the nation in of workload plans to expand in the next few history and reliability of NOTIFIER and its dis network were the big selling points on the And of course the flexibility of the Digital Command system for mass notification Stacy Systems installed fiber optic cable across the connecting 13 Notifier NFS2 3030 panels high speed network cards These panels will 40 buildings containing over 2 million square of space DVC stations will be installed in all to facilitate fire and emergency messaging ONYXWorks workstations will provide the control and monitoring functionality the requires the other VA hospitals Dallas officials wanted be able to pick up a microphone at one of the and talk to any building The NOTIFIER allow building specific and entire campus The NFS2 3030 panels installed SSD are set up for individualized messages and needed customizable emergency events there is a tornado for instance the system can a different message than a fire emergency amber colored strobes would be used for event said Stacy said the fact that he working on a project that keep veterans safe was not lost on him His a World War II vet was in the transitional care at the Dallas VA Medical Center for some time get them a dependable system that works I humbled by it said Stacy over 60 years NOTIFIER has been a leader in the fire alarm industry Today we are largest manufacturer of engineered fire alarm systems with over 400 distributors worldwide and support operations on every continent for the flexibility and options your business needs Leaders in Life Safety Technology